More byMichele

When award-winning humorist and mom Tracy Beckerman moved to the suburbs, she lost her cool. But not in the way you might think.

“I recognized that I had had this descent into uncoolness,” recalls Beckerman. “It really hit me the day that I got stopped by a cop while I was driving my son to school, and I was in my bathrobe.”

It’s true. Beckerman was stopped. The officer said, “I guess I don’t need to give you a ticket for making an illegal left turn, but I definitely should give you a ticket for driving in an ugly bathrobe.”

After graduating from college, Beckerman sought out a job in television. When she didn’t get one, she took a job doing singing telegrams—in a gorilla suit. “I was good at it, but the suit gave me hives,” she laughs, “so I had to find something else to do.”

Eventually, Beckerman got a job in television that garnered an Emmy for her as well as a Writers’ Guild award. She worked behind the scenes producing promos, writing lines like, “Could your drycleaners be killing you? Find out tonight at 11.” Beckerman says that they called her the “Queen of Fear.” While she enjoyed this glamorous job, after she had her son, she chose to be a stay-at-home mom.

Without two incomes, Beckerman and her husband couldn’t afford to stay in New York City, so they moved to the suburbs of New Jersey. When they got there, Beckerman says she felt like she was lost. “I seemed lost geographically, but I was also lost existentially because I quit this really cool job in television, which really defined me,” she says.

After her daughter was born, Beckerman thought about working again, but didn’t want to return to television. Her foray into comedy came by accident.

“I wanted to get my life back, and that didn’t mean I wanted to stop being a stay-at-home mom, but I wanted to find a balance,” she says. For her, that meant losing the extra “baby weight,” cutting her hair short, and even getting a couple tattoos. She also wanted to reinvent herself on the inside and do something that would nurture her creatively.

“Something funny happened to my son one day at school, and I wrote about it,” says Beckerman. “It came out even funnier than what actually happened.” She sold the story and wrote more. Soon she had a humor column in her local newspaper. Now, her column, also called “Lost in Suburbia,” is syndicated to over 400 newspapers in 25 states.

Beckerman wants to help others who feel “lost”—whether it’s due to moving, losing a job, becoming an empty-nester, or any kind of life transition. Starting in mid-September, Beckerman is inviting people to contribute their stories on her website, LostInSuburbia.com. Each week, the writer of the best story will win a signed copy of her book, as well as have the piece run in the newspapers where her column appears.

What’s next for Beckerman? “I don’t know. Maybe it’s time that I return to my roots and start delivering singing telegrams again,” she jokes. “Maybe this time around, I should be an orangutan or something a little higher on the food chain. I’ll think about it.”

Michele Wojciechowski is the award-winning author of the humor book Next Time I Move, They’ll Carry Me Out in a Box, writer of the award-winning humor column, Wojo’s World®, and a not-yet award-winning stand-up comic. She has also been lost in suburbia, but only because she is directionally impaired. Check out her website at www.wojosworld.com.